‘Redwald is worried that King Offa will get to know that I’m in Kaupang,’ I said to Osric as we walked up the beach and out of earshot of the skiff’s crew.
‘Then we must take care not to draw attention to ourselves,’ he answered. ‘If Kaupang’s a seasonal market, there’ll be plenty of strangers who arrive here just for a short visit. We should be able to blend in.’
We stood aside to allow the pony and loaded sledge to go past at a lunging trot, the driver slapping the reins and shouting encouragement. Then we followed them along the track as it led up the slope of the beach to where it skirted the grove of alder trees and then crested the low ridge. On the far side, we found an untidy straggle of humble single-storey dwellings, their walls and roofs made of weathered grey planks. Among them were several much larger buildings shaped like huge upturned boats and roofed with turf. It took a moment to realize that this was Kaupang and our footpath, where it broadened, was Kaupang’s one and only street, unpaved and chaotic.
‘So this is the great market place of the north!’ observed Osric dubiously.
Scores of makeshift sales booths were little more than crude hutches. Rocks and turf sods had been piled up to make their walls, and sheets of canvas rigged to keep out the rain. Other shops were open-sided sheds. Much of what was for sale was merely heaped up on the ground, jumbled together, and left for prospective buyers to browse. Despite the chaos and clutter, the place was swarming with customers.
We strolled forward, picking our way around untidy displays or squeezing between rickety stalls set up at random.
‘I don’t see many takers for Redwald’s shipment of household querns,’ I murmured. There were some women in the crowd, but not many. They wore loose linen dresses reaching to their ankles and most of them had tied up their hair in scarves. That was a shame because, from what I glimpsed, they had fine, lustrous hair and wore it long. By far the majority of Kaupang’s customers were men. In general, they were burly, heavily bearded and exuded a certain swaggering arrogance. One passerby stared into my face, and then gave me an odd look – he must have seen my different-coloured eyes – and I was glad that Redwald’s dagger was very obvious in my belt. A drunk came swaying out of a ramshackle building that did duty for a tavern. He pitched forward on his face in the dirt in front of us. Like everyone else, we skirted around him and carried on walking.
In the area where foodstuffs were for sale, the most common offering was fish: split, dried and hung up like laundry, dangling in long strings that gave off a pungent smell. I could see little sign of the sort of farm produce normally found in a country market. There were no vegetables or fruit or fresh meat, just a few eggs and some soft white cheese in tubs being sold by one of the very few women stall holders.
‘I wouldn’t risk my teeth on that lot,’ Osric commented, nodding towards a handful of knobbly oatmeal loaves displayed in a wheelbarrow.
We drifted on to where farm implements were for sale. Here the traders had laid out axes, saws, cauldrons, hammers, chisels, lengths of chain and barrels of massive iron nails. It was also possible to purchase rough slabs of raw iron, ready to be heated and moulded into tools. I thought sourly of Osric’s nickname of Weyland, and that made me look more closely at some of the men in the crowd. A big ox of a man standing near me was examining an axe. His shirt front was open. Hanging from a leather thong around his neck was a T-shaped amulet. I recognized Thor’s hammer.
‘Let’s see if we can track down a seller of hunting birds,’ I suggested.
‘Maybe over there.’ Osric pointed towards one of the larger open-sided sheds. Some sort of unidentifiable animal skin had been nailed to a cross-beam high enough to be seen above the heads of the crowd.
We pushed our way through the press of people and found ourselves in front of a display of anchors, rolls of sailcloth, fishing line and hooks, balls of twine, ropes and nets. The air reeked of pine tar. The proprietor was a scrawny, pockmarked fellow who was trying to sell a coil of rope to a customer. The local language was close enough to Saxon for me to understand most of his sales talk. The rope was dark, greasy and – if the man was to be believed – cut from the thick leathery skin of a large animal he called a hross-hvalr, and far superior to rope made from strands of flax. His client, a thick-necked man with half an ear missing, was fingering the rope doubtfully and saying that he preferred thin strips of good-quality stallion hide so that he could plait his own rope. ‘One horse’s skin is as good as another. You will save yourself the labour of all that plaiting,’ wheedled the shopkeeper.
His client was not persuaded and dropped the heavy rope’s end with a disdainful grunt, then wandered off. I waited until he was out of earshot, then asked the shopkeeper. ‘Excuse me, I heard you speaking of a “hross-hvalr” just now. Is that some sort of horse?’
The man looked me up and down. He must have seen by my clothes that I was not a seafarer and therefore an unlikely customer. He was about to turn away when perhaps he noticed the colour of my eyes because he hesitated. His expression, which had been dismissive, changed to one that was more wary.
‘Why would you want to know?’ he asked.
‘Just curiosity. I’m a stranger to these parts and “hross” sounds much like horse.’
‘You’re right in that,’ the man agreed.
‘I’m told that many of the animals native to this region are white. I’m wondering if this type of horse is also white.’
‘I’ve never seen a live hross-hvalr,’ said the merchant. ‘I get offered lengths of rope made up from their skin. It’s always the same colour as that one there.’ He nodded towards the coil of rope on the ground. It was a dull, grey-black.
A thought occurred to me. ‘So you don’t make the rope yourself?’
‘No, it comes ready made. The hross-hvalr lives far in the north where the winter nights are so long that there’s plenty of dark time for a man to fill in the hours sitting by his hearth, slicing up skin into rope.’
‘Perhaps I should ask someone from that area,’ I suggested.
The man paused before replying, cautious about giving information to a stranger.
‘If you can help me find what I’m looking for,’ I coaxed, ‘I would gladly pay a small reward.’
He cocked his head on one side and looked at me sharply. ‘What exactly is it that you are seeking?’
I hesitated, aware of my own doubts. ‘I’m looking for an unusual sort of horse, a white one. It’s called a unicorn.’
There was a startled pause, and then he threw back his head and hooted with laughter. ‘A unicorn! I don’t believe it!’
I stood there, feeling foolish and trying not to show it.
He laughed so hard, he almost choked. ‘In these parts you’ll find Sleipnir before you come across any unicorn. A hross-hvalr is a horse whale,’ he gasped finally.
I waited until he had regained his breath and, curbing my irritation, asked him again who had supplied him with horse whale rope.
‘His name is Ohthere,’ he told me. ‘He owns a large farm on the coast and so far north that it takes him almost a month to get here, sailing every day and anchoring each night. He shows up in Kaupang every year, probably the only time he meets anyone outside his own family.’
‘Where can I find this Ohthere?’
The shopkeeper was still chuckling. ‘At the end of the street, on the outskirts of town. He always sets up a big tent there, on the right.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, stepping back. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’
‘And tell him that Oleif sent you!’ he called after me as I trudged on, Osric limping beside me.
‘What did he mean about finding Sleipnir before we came across a unicorn?’ Osric asked.